Lack of human contact causing MH crisis?

[Flipslop]

I’ve been doing alot of reading (and have some formal training) in MH matters, particularly around trauma and burnout recovery. A key thing that keeps coming up is the fundamental need for human contact to keep mentally well, especially when recovering from trauma.
whats everyone’s thoughts on this? I think I’ve really seen the detrimental affect on my own mental health since working from home over the last 5 years
am I being reasonable to think WFH and just generally a more distant society is stacking up for MH crisis?

I used to think my social skills were quite good

But these days, trying to meet people, they often look a bit like a rabbit caught in the headlights when greeted by gentle chat, even in a meeting people situation

I moved house and I've joined a local social thing. But like the local social thing in my previous area, this one seems to be falling apart. Hardly anyone actually wants to go.

The one lady I thought I was getting on pretty well with is trying to force conversations about politics. I made it clear that I'm not up for that and she essentially said she is not sure she can make friends with people who won't declare their "allegiance" in certain topics.

My parents generation didn't have any issues accepting that other people think differently than them.

I also think there's a lot of hidden substance abuse going on and that's also making people a bit strange. One guy walked into the last social and was already too drunk for conversation. I actually left at that point.

So going out and meeting people has made me realised I'm better off at home with a book. The younger people in the group have also commented how insanely difficult it is to just maintain friendships these days.

Also the small percentage who do fullly work from home suggests this isn’t a cause

There's a piece in the independent that suggested the rising numbers of youngsters at church can be seen as a strategy to avoid loneliness and some of the things you are talking about here.

It's not my cup of tea but it's symptomatic of this new, increasingly asocial landscape.

Yes, I “keep my hand in” by doing the stuff I have to do where interactions are necessary. Those aren’t “social” though.

I’ve been doing it for 50 years and I’m doing just fine.

You develop the social skills to pull it off by putting yourself out there and having it go wrong a few times and learning from that until you get it right. The same as with any skill.

I’m an introvert who does two days in the office and until relatively recently thought I was fine. But in the last couple of years I’ve lost a sibling and split up with a partner, (both of whom were fairly tactile) and I am really, really struggling with the lack of touch.
I don’t have parents or kids, and my friends have never been huggers, so I honestly can’t remember the last time I was physically touched - I think it was possibly Christmas, when I had a hair cut and the girl who washed my hair gave me a free head massage - it was all I could do to stop from bursting into tears. I think I need to book a massage every quarter so that I don’t feel like this again - for some reason it makes me feel pretty unloveable.

I’ve been wondering this too - I have been working from home since 2017 and my anxiety while always pretty high, seems to have escalated in the last few fears. I suppose it has eliminated annoying office colleagues though, and there are a fair few of them.

I also think a lot of people are erroneously thinking WFH and lack of social interaction = no interaction.

I interact with people on most of my working days. I have phone calls and teams meetings. That can be challenging for me due to my mental illnesses but very doable from home as that helps me.

What i don't do or want to do is just be in an office listening to everyone else's calls, everyone else's inane chat, listening to their problems from the traffic on the way in, to their period pain, to their relationship issues and listening to their mouth-breathing, coughing, humming, sniffing etc l. And for no reason other than the idea that it's just 'good' for the team and it's members. I don't think it is for all.

I like my colleagues much more when I see them in a very limited and structured way (while doing my job very effectively) and I am a much nicer person to talk to because I'm not in a state of fight or flight or just being generally pissed off with other peoples bullshit.

"Out there" is rapidly ceasing to exist. The local community centre is likely to close. The pubs are really quiet outside of football times.

I find it’s my lack of friends and family contact that affect my mental health, nothing to do with a workplace. People at work were never real friends or meaningful connections so I don’t miss that, just like talking to people in the supermarket queue isn’t a real connection.

What does affect me is as my friends have married, had kids and moved on, is them no longer inviting me to things because they are now “family” occasions.

Single friends get left behind, it’s a lonely world.

You see the bad news stuff I don’t really agree with. - if anything for me it puts things into perspective for me - realising there is a whole world out there with 6 billion people and there are many many people worse off than me. I also find it a distraction from my own worries.

I couldn't be a solely work from home person. Id get very depressed

@Tootiredtowhat yes, I even accidentally acquired a young boyfriend in 2023

not a good thing, came from loneliness and friends vanishing.

I don't know, I can think of times where the more I tried the worse it got. I'm definitely going to cling on to the relationships I've got as I've no faith in my ability to make new friends in the current social landscape.

Agree about office working, and would add to that the impact of the journey to and from work (especially darkness in winter when coming home), and also that some of the people you work with are just not those you gel with.

Ok fair enough, but personally I can’t think of any times in my life when the less I practiced at something, the better at it I got.

That's great you can do that, many can't. We're not designed to see and hear news constantly.

Most of some peoples worries would disappear if they put down their phone and just lived their life.

I don't know how else to describe it. Its something I feel I tried in good faith but couldn't make it work. It just got more and more awkward with time and I didn't get better at it.

I think it really depends on WHO you are surrounded by.

Of course, the more you are ‘out there’, the more choice you have and therefore you can surround yourself with the right people.

As someone with trauma/c-PTSD, I found that there are few people I actually want to be with. Often, people are emotional immature and more of a hindrance, to me, than they are a help.
And if you’re talking about trauma, you need to remember that many people will be dissociating/de realising, which will make making connexions with others harder too!

So yes overall, I agree with you. Loneliness is becoming an epidemic. And it will have a huge impact on MH. This, in turns, is driven by a very individualist society and people only being interested by what is of their benefit (as seen in many threads on here btw). Maybe, when we, as a society/human beings,will reach rock bottom, well realise 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

That’s only because in the U.K., the only way to socialise is by going to the pub/football. Golf maybe too.

Contrast with france where friends are always to each other’s houses for an impromptu ‘aperitif’

The difference is that you have a busy life outside of work time. You aren't sat indoors working alone all day then sitting alone all evening either with no interaction

Yes, it's a way to summarise a big part of the problem. I can recommend Johann Hari's book: "Lost Connections" as a good discussion on this.

I’m not dismissing anyone’s experience in terms of what’s available in their local area, but I’ve got to say that personally, this doesn’t really chime with what I’ve seen in my part of the UK. I’m not particularly into clubs etc, but my mum is, and she’s currently got a weekly book group and a weekly theatre group and a twice-weekly exercise class, there’s a local coffee morning, there are talks galore hosted by multiple different societies and the local university, there’s church stuff if she was into that. I’m not personally seeing a current lack of local communal life, I think the issue is more that that kind of structured group socialising doesn’t appeal to everyone, and it’s not necessarily a guarantee for finding close meaningful connections if you lack them, although the chances have got to be better than spending the equivalent time sat at home.

Not the case either in London or where I live now. It is more retired people timings here, but there are definitely other things to do.

I did a couple of classes and the place running it seems busy and popular. But people do their thing and go home.

getting a dog seems to admit you to a community automatically here but I don't want one. And (controversially) I don't think a dog would be thrilled to live in such a small flat.

I do think the explosion of dog ownership is linked to all this.

The American Time Use Survey shows that face to face social time has plummeted especially amongst young people. I do think it could be a driver of poor MH. I thought this article was really good: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/america-decline-hanging-out/677451/